Organising and Mobilising for Change: Observations and Lessons from America’s leading Data Cities November 4th, 2016 by Andrew Collinge Last week I attended a gathering of the Civic Analytics Network. This was an incredibly useful and hard-working event, supported by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School. This quick report sets out a series of observations and reactions. If you are interested in increasing data and digital capabilities…
London Office of Data Analytics: Documenting the Learning Process July 7th, 2016 by Andrew Collinge As regular readers of this blog will know, the GLA and Nesta are working together to run a pilot to demonstrate that performing data analytics on datasets sourced from multiple local authorities and other novel sources can help reform public services in the capital. This short blog provides a link through to a more detailed…
A House Divided: Talk to the Alan Turing Institute Cities Summit February 9th, 2016 by Andrew Collinge Last week I was privileged to give a talk to the Alan Turing Institute Cities Summit, hosted by UCL’s Bartlett School of Planning. Knowing that I would be speaking alongside some of the best in the data science business, I opted to cover the cultural and organisational blocks on the adoption of data science in…
Sharing Cities – the Importance of Values and Behaviours in amongst the Science and Process of Programme Delivery January 27th, 2016 by Andrew Collinge Last week, we launched our H2020 Smart Cities and Communities Programme, “Sharing Cities”. The two day event brought together 70 people, from 30 partner organisations, 6 countries, all working in splendid harmony across 8 highly connected work packages – well that’s the plan, eventually. With a desire to do things differently (representatives of the European…
Blow out the candles: London Datastore in its new form is one year old today October 26th, 2015 by Andrew Collinge It’s a full year to the day since, with the able assistance of Datapress Open Data Publishing, we relaunched the London Datastore. As one tends to do as the smoke of the extinguished birthday candles invades your nostrils, the London Datastore team were for a few moments nostalgic about the journey of Datastore this past…
Building the City Data Market August 11th, 2015 by Andrew Collinge We need to make smart cities and smart government real. To do so, we need to take city data seriously, and give shape to a complex marketplace. An elderly man sits comfortably in his housing association flat. As usual, his son is having a busy day. Both are content that (aided by an integrated health…
The Morning after the Night before: international recognition for the London Datastore July 10th, 2015 by Andrew Collinge Last night, my colleague Paul Hodgson and I attended the ODI Annual Open Data Awards. The event took place in the striking Bloomberg headquarters – a good choice of award partner because there was a guy who understood the potential of data. The GLA, and more specifically the London Datastore, had made it through the…
Looking east as well as west… and plenty more besides: a response to “Big Data in the Big Apple” June 17th, 2015 by Andrew Collinge Last week, the Capital City Foundation (CCF) published “Big Data in the Big Apple: the lessons London can learn from New York’s data-driven approach to smart cities”. First of all, I am going to say that it is a great piece of work, going deeper than before into how the NYC model could be applied…
Saved by the Bell – Hypercat Summit Talk June 11th, 2015 by Andrew Collinge I spoke at the Hypercat Summit earlier this week. I suffered the shame of being buzzed out when my allotted three minutes were up, so here is my talk, published in full…. I will be straightforward. I want to see a range of actors in this city aware of and organised around the sharing and…
Everyone loves a sharer – time for a frank discussion about sharing city data May 15th, 2015 by Andrew Collinge I am going to keep this post very brief. For those who want to delve deeper, there is piece from this week’s Computer Weekly here by Policy Exchange’s Eddie Copeland. I am not going to set out a strident defence of the local authority position; nor am I going to congratulate Eddie on exposing a…
While the window is still open: 2015 New Year Resolutions for Datastore January 30th, 2015 by Andrew Collinge Last year was a landmark year for Datastore, with a significant amount of activity centred on and then generated by the launch of London Datastore mark II (LDSII). The City Data Team here at City Hall has been busy throughout January, so before we tip into February and then March and then Spring becomes Summer…
LDS II: the Next Step to a City Data Future October 22nd, 2014 by Andrew Collinge So London Datastore Mark II (LDS II) is here. The beads of sweat are still trickling down the brows of technical colleagues and our developers, DataPress. It is very largely thanks to them that you can enjoy this site’s technical splendour. As the team here at City Hall ploughed through intensive design stages towards launch,…
Changing the City through Pictures alone? October 28th, 2010 by Andrew Collinge Yesterday City Hall hosted a Visualising London event. I introduced the day with a challenge that the growing digital visualisation movement has to go way beyond simply delivering beautiful evidence if it is to make a real difference. Of course visual impact will engage, but the intersection of the high art of information design, statistics…
Data, Data, Everywhere. Now let’s make a difference with it. March 5th, 2010 by Andrew Collinge “Everywhere you look, the quantity of information in the world is soaring… Merely keeping up with this flood, and storing the bits that might be useful, is difficult enough. Analysing it, to spot patterns and extract useful information is harder still. Even so, the data deluge is already starting to transform business, government, science and…
